Instead of sending the programming commands from the computer over USB through an AVR (the TinyISP) and then to the target chip, you instead build a single board with a ZIF socket, an AVR controller, and a bit of flash memory (perhaps onboard on the AVR, or maybe in an SD card, or whatever).

You put a chip in the socket, power up the board (light turns green) hit a button (light turns red) and it reads the program from flash and burns it onto the chip (and maybe verifies the burn). Light turns green, you take out the chip, put in another, and repeat.

No need for a computer to burn the chips once you’ve got it loaded into your programmer, and you can swap out SD cards to select a program to burn. Speed up your pipeline, and have a cool unique little mass-programmer.

Obviously there’s a little bit of design time and programming involved… but isn’t that why you’re in this business?

@tyler – there are a number of programmers like this already, albeit not necessarily with an SD card (which is a good idea).

For example, the PICKit2 and PICKit3(finally?) programmers do this, allowing "programming to go" (a.k.a. "in-the-field programming"), for about $35. There’s also an even cooler micro-widget like this, http://www.flexipanel.com/TEAclipper.htm, that can also be used remove nasty bits of food from between your teeth (in parallel!).

Taking the SD card thing one step further, bail on switching-out cards, just put all of your images on one card and cycle through them with a pushbutton and pick which one you want.